Guess who’s back with peanut butter cookies on a Friday night! All hail PB and TGIF! Anyway, I’m really glad the cookies turned out right; my waning motivation could do with a little boost after the muffin disaster last week. Also, because the electricity bill was a whopping $400+ last month, I’ll be limiting all kitchen activities to once per week. That will probably go well with my wallet, tummy and school work

Honey roasted sounds so darn good! I know this is the exact brand of PB that was once recalled over salmonella in 2007, but I only found out after I made my purchase. Ah well, it’s safe for consumption now anyway. It’s like how you can’t boycott milk forever because of China’s melamine scandal.

The dough was easy to work with and the cookies tasted good! I really, really hate working with overly greasy and soft dough. I ran out of brown sugar and PB, and also reduced the butter just in case I get a greasy mess. There were patches of oil every where, but the cookies weren’t as moist as I thought they’d be. Maybe I could use more PB and throw in PB M&Ms the next time round; no one ever says no to PB!

I’ll have one for breakfast tomorrow before my run, just to make sure that they still taste good, and hopefully even better! Thank god these cookies are in time for Mothers’ day and the dance concert I’ll be attending tomorrow

The last time I checked, it was okay to bake using Toblerone. I was so excited to try out Nigella’s raspberry and white chocolate muffins using blueberries, and I was pretty sure they would be one of the best muffins I’ll ever make. But… Something went terribly wrong. They were supposed to go under “Favourites!”, but now they’re going to “Flops”

I love white Toblerone so much, I can eat them with pancakes. What a pity that the muffins turned out disastrous 😦

Honestly, the batter looked so promising! That was a hell lot of false hopes.

Right from the moment I set the pan in, there was a burning smell, which I casually dismissed. 20 minutes later, they came out of the oven charred. I tried some of them, and the muffin tops still tasted good. The muffin itself wasn’t too bad, but the unsightly carcinogenic parts were a huge turn off, and in my mum’s words, “a health hazard!” There goes my Toblerone 😦

I’m going to try this again though, but only after some read up. Next time round, I’ll use baking chips and make sure they’re way hidden and away from the top so they won’t burn. I confess that I was greedy enough to add 10 additional grams of Toblerone and left them in relatively large chunks. Some of the submerged white chocolate chunks actually oozed out from the muffin tops, leaving a huge black mess on the muffin tray. Le sigh! Any advice anyone? Time to pull up my (baking) socks!!

I hate how ugly my cookies are!! It’s time to invest in better brown sugar. The recipe called for melted butter but I was too chicken to use that, lest I ended up with a greasy puddle. My cookie ended up being thicker in the middle, and not very chewy 😦 I’m gonna try it out with melted butter again. Think my dad’s gonna flip when the electricity bill comes this month.

Taste wise, they were quite good, but not yet perfect! My best choc chip cookies thus far are the ones made using William Sonoma’s recipe, and with nuts! Those are crunchy, but absolutely divine. I’ll have to continue hunting for the perfect chewy choc chip cookie recipe, something that will yield cookies similar to that of Subway’s! That probably involves a lot of butter and sugar, so I’ll have to make them after my Napfa test!

King prawns with mayonnaise and shredded mozzarella cheese, de-freaking-licious! I’m a diehard seafood fan, and I’ve gotta eat my fill before I have to start worrying about cholesterol levels. Eileen’s mum ALWAYS makes them whenever we go over, love her mum!! Dad bought some huge prawns back today (not huge enough for me though) so we had the exact same thing for lunch. My mittens brushed against the heating coil of the toaster for a split second and good lord, there was a small spark and fire! If those were my bare fingers, I’d be in Changi hospital weeping away, swearing never to go near the oven or toaster again. Anyway, Mum said that the prawns were too fishy (they were very very fresh though) so the next time round, we’ll probably add some garlic or whatsoever, and definitely more cheese. I’m turning into the weekend resident chef who cooks, bakes, eats and watch dramas on TV! At this rate, I’m never gonna get my school work done

I was dying to try out these hazelnut cookies after Dolly posted them up, but they didn’t turn out too well for me 😦 Either my brown sugar was too coarse, or the ground hazelnut just didn’t appeal to me; I don’t know. This is my 2nd domestic failure in a week and it’s starting to get to me 😦

The ugly specks are brown sugar and my cookies look nothing like Dolly’s 😦 I’m gonna have to try them out again someday, I have to! Meanwhile, I still have a list of to-bake waiting impatiently. Time to pull up my socks!

This has to be my best breakfast treat so far! Fuss-free, quick and tasy. No need for oil, frying pan or cleaning up; all you need is foil.

Spread some tuna, lace it with mayo, crack an egg, drizzle some sauce and then sprinkle pepper. Pop it on the toaster, wait, and then gobble. Make sure the yolk doesn’t overcook, or there’ll be no oozy yellow goodness to flood the toast and make your day!

Instead of doing my evening run last night, I was in the kitchen licking durian buttercream. If I hadn’t promised Dad a durian cake when he returned from his trip, I wouldn’t have attempted a layer cake that soon. True enough, the sponge layers were terribly uneven, but taste wise… divine. This cake may not cater to western palate, but if you love durians, you have to try this out!

I warned my Dad that it wasn’t anywhere near healthy, but he polished off the entire slice for breakfast this morning. The durian flavour was very intense, but I personally would have liked it to be very, very, very intense haha! And check out the durian fibers! Unless you blend the durian flesh into pulp, the fibers will get entangled in your whisk. It’s okay, you can always wrestle it out with a fork like I did.

It was virtually impossible to remove the entire chunk of flesh from the seed, so whatever that wouldn’t come off went straight into my mouth! Because of the durian, it’s even more expensive to bake this than a cheesecake.

The sponge itself tasted so good warm, I couldn’t help but pinch a little. God knows how many calories I consumed in the process of making the cake!!

This was after I covered the cake with durian cream last night. I didn’t have a lazy susan turntable or offset spatula, so I had to make do a normal spatula and uh… chopping board. My mum laughed and said it looked like shit At least it tasted good!

Terrible layering but the copious amount of durian made up for it! I halved the sponge recipe but used 2/3 of the buttercream, can’t be stingy when it comes to durian nom nom nom! The amount of butter the buttercream recipe called for scared the bejesus out of me, so I reduced it from 200g to 150g. Even then, I could still taste a hint of the butter when the cake was still warm I really, really hate buttercream, whipped cream or any cream that greases my mouth. Fortunately, I could barely taste the butter after chilling it overnight. Unfortunately, I know it’s still there. The next time I make this, which I definitely will if time permits, I’ll reduce the butter even further and chuck in even more flesh! It’s gonna be a close-to-pure durian cake, and not durian buttercream!